REVIEWS

Post-pandemic Workplaces

— Linus Tan

Design for your workers, not the work

In the past, work was like a taxi that brought its passengers to their destination. However, passengers now value the journey just as much as getting to the destination. Hence, taxis must offer their passengers a greater travelling experience, or risk losing them to ride-sharing services.


Many corporations have been quick to describe what workplaces should be post pandemic. Harvard Business Review recently published various examples of post-pandemic workplaces and recommended managers choose based on the type of work their employees conduct.[1] UNStudio, an international architecture firm, promotes the use of technology and a focus on employee wellbeing in future workplaces.[2] Gensler, another global architecture firm, suggests that space and social experiences will be some of the most valued aspects of the post-pandemic office.[3]

However, what is often absent from these reports is an elaboration on how these workplaces will foster employees’ sense of purpose at work. Addressing the employees’ sense of purpose in workplace design is a crucial first step because purpose is a critical motivator at work.[4] Failure to consider the employees’ sense of purpose will only lead us to create workplaces that facilitate the activity of work (i.e., what we do at work) rather than motivating people at the workplace (i.e., why they do the work).

For example, when my company saw that office desks were often empty—because staff were always shuffling between appointments—management started discussing hot desking arrangements to introduce more staff to the office. I was appalled. While I agreed that the desks were often empty, my desk was the only physical evidence of my presence at work. It represented my sense of belonging to my workplace. Stripping away my name from my desk, literally and figuratively, made me feel like a nomad and led me to question my purpose in the organization.

Are we designing for workers, or just for the work they do?

Many corporations today assume that their work is meaningful and that it offers employees the opportunity to fulfil their life’s purpose. In reality, most work lacks any intrinsic purpose other than to make revenue for the corporation. Anecdotal stories from conversations with peers suggest that work often comes at a significant expense of the individual’s fulfilment. As Elaine Butler notes, “the contemporary framing of work…interpret[s] and so represent[s] work in its capitalist garb: as paid work in the labour market/force, as the production or consumption of commodities.”[5]

Workplace designs have also followed this “work-is-important” perspective, introducing, for example, open-plan offices to foster more collaboration, and with this, greater productivity. However, when evidence of the negative impact of open plans on workforce productivity emerged, such as increased noise levels affecting work performance,[6] open-plan designs were cautioned against.[7] Another example of organizations prioritizing the corporation over its employees is the activity-based workplace where employees have no permanent seats and rooms are designed based on their intended work activity. Firms claim that such workplace designs enable employees to personalize their workplace.[8] While research shows mixed reviews of worker benefits,[9] firms are almost guaranteed to save money as they can accommodate up to 20% more workers in the same office space.[10]

That is not to say that corporations do not consider their employees’ needs. For example, Twitter and Facebook have recently moved to permanent remote work arrangements to provide employees with work flexibility.[11] However, companies need to do much more when it comes to redesigning their workplace post pandemic. 

Is our work where we fulfil our purpose?

With the number of people quitting their jobs expected to skyrocket post-pandemic,[11] workplace design needs to go beyond improving how employees do their work. Instead, workplace design needs to foster employees’ sense of purpose at work if organizations want to retain their staff. But what gives the employees’ a sense of purpose at work?

Many of us have grown up conditioned to assume our “purpose” will be fulfilled through our careers. Afterall, the answer to the common childhood question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is typically an occupation. This notion, that our work is where we answer our calling, is becoming increasingly obsolete. 

Historically, purposeful work was found in religion. It was known as a vocation, which refers to the dedication of one’s life to serve the Church.[12] The outcome of one’s servitude was to achieve God’s grace, and any personal pleasure or profit gained from the activity was deemed sinful.[13]

When the Augustinian monk Martin Luther spoke out about the corruption in the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation, society’s perspective on purposeful work started to shift. Luther asserted that everyone could pursue work that was purposeful outside religion. At this point, the notion emerged that purposeful work could be secular, was punishment-free, and possibly enjoyable.[14] Since then, purposeful work has evolved to mean the ability to reshape the world through one’s labour.[15]

Growing tension between one’s purpose and one’s work

During the Industrial Revolution, secular work subsumed the dedication aspect of vocation, and became a “central dimension of human worth and dignity.”[16] This commitment to work was evident in Marx’s writings, in that work was a core activity of all humans and where one finds life fulfilment.[17] In other words, work became a means for us to use our skills as productive members of our societies. 

Other individuals began to see work as a means to search for and build one's personal identity. For instance, social theorists and novelists wrote about honing one’s identity through a commitment to work, which could be outside one’s primary place of work.[18] So how is an individual supposed to find their purpose in life through their work when where they work may not be the place to find it?

Despite the growing divergence between purpose and work, conservative views of work persist. In particular, the view that purposeful work occurs when people’s skills are matched to the job most suited to them.[19] These conservative views may have led to workplace design that focused on the corporations’ needs before that of their employees, as described in the examples above.

A way forward

To truly design a workplace for employees, corporations must consider ways of fostering employees’ sense of purpose at work. Rather than designing spaces for different types of work, can corporations offer places that deliver different experiences for their employees? Yes they can, as ARUP’s Making place: The recalibration of work, life and place reports.[20] Corporations can focus on creating work places as places for:

  1. formal training and informal learning,

  2. creating and maintaining social connections,

  3. cultural sharing,

  4. collaborative discussions and co-working, and

  5. for personal recharging and mindfulness.

Instead of designing workplaces for productivity, can workplaces be designed to value their employees, and should they? Yes, they can and they should, according to Haworth’s Workspace Design and the Pursuit of Happiness.[21] O’Neill outlines five workplace features that contribute to the employees’ feeling of being valued:

  1. workplace legibility (ease of understanding the intended use of the workplace),

  2. individual control over their workspace,

  3. necessary technology in the individual workspace,

  4. access to daylight, and

  5. adequate storage for the employees.

While articles about the post-pandemic workplace have pervaded the Internet, we must embrace the evolving meaning of work from the employee’s perspective. Only then might we design a post-pandemic workplace that employees will be excited to return to.


References

[1]  Daniel Davis, ‘5 Models for the Post-Pandemic Workplace’, Harvard Business Review, June 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/06/5-models-for-the-post-pandemic-workplace.

[2]  UNStudio, ‘How Our Workplaces Will Look, Post-Corona’, UNStudio, 2021, http://www.unstudio.com/en/page/14542/how-our-workplaces-will-look-post-corona.

[3] Janet Pogue McLaurin, ‘5 Trends Driving the New Post-Pandemic Workplace | Dialogue Blog | Research & Insight’, Gensler, 22 June 2021, https://www.gensler.com/blog/5-trends-driving-the-new-post-pandemic-workplace.

[4] Frederik Anseel, ‘Six Important Ways COVID-19 Has Changed the Workplace for Good’, University of New South Wales Business Think, 13 August 2020, https://www.businessthink.unsw.edu.au/articles/6-key-ways-covid-19-changing-workplace.

[5] Elaine Butler, ‘The Power of Discourse: Work-Related Learning in the Learning Age’, in Power in Practice: Adult Education and the Struggle for Knowledge and Power in Society, ed. R Cervero and A Wilson (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 64–65.

[6] Paul Roelofsen, ‘Performance Loss in Open‐plan Offices Due to Noise by Speech’, Journal of Facilities Management 6, no. 3 (1 January 2008): 202–11, https://doi.org/10.1108/14725960810885970.

[7] Ali Morris, ‘Open-Plan Offices Must Be Rethought to Prevent Employees Losing Focus’, Dezeen, 8 August 2017, https://www.dezeen.com/2017/08/08/open-plan-offices-rethought-prevent-employees-losing-focus-haworth-white-papers/.

[8] Agnes King, ‘KPMG to Trial Activity-Based Working Organisation Design’, Australian Financial Review, 23 July 2013, https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-services/kpmg-to-trial-activity-based-working-organisation-design-20130724-ijbq5.

[9] Lauren Arundell et al., ‘The Impact of Activity Based Working (ABW) on Workplace Activity, Eating Behaviours, Productivity, and Satisfaction’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15, no. 5 (17 May 2018): 1005, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15051005.

[10] Elizabeth Sander, ‘Office Design Should Focus on People, Not Just the Work They Do’, The Conversation, 2 December 2014, http://theconversation.com/office-design-should-focus-on-people-not-just-the-work-they-do-33677.

[11] Elizabeth Dwoskin, ‘Americans Might Never Go Back to the Office, and Twitter Is Leading the Charge’, Washington Post, 1 October 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/01/twitter-work-from-home/; Carlie Porterfield, ‘Facebook Will Allow Nearly All Employees To Work Remotely Post-Pandemic’, Forbes, 9 June 2021, sec. Business, https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/06/09/facebook-will-allow-nearly-all-employees-to-work-remotely-post-pandemic/.  

[12] Sharon Beder, Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate (London: Zed Books, 2001), 14; Deborah J Haynes, The Vocation of the Artist (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

[13] Timothy Fry, RB1980: The Rule of St. Benedict (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1981), 78; Beder, Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate.

[14] Beder, 15.

[15] Roger B Hill, ‘Historical Context of the Work Ethic’, 1999, 4, http://workethic.coe.uga.edu/historypdf.pdf.

[16] Jane Dawson, ‘A History of Vocation: Tracing a Keyword of Work, Meaning, and Moral Purpose’, Adult Education Quarterly 55, no. 3 (May 2005): 224, https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713605274606.

[17] Karl Marx, ‘Extracts from Marx’s Theory’, in Readings from Karl Marx, ed. Seyer Derek (New York: Routledge, 1989); Lee Hardy, The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1990), 30.

[18] Dawson, ‘A History of Vocation’, 225.

[19] Dorothy Mary Emmet, Function, Purpose and Powers: Some Concepts in the Study of Individuals and Societies (Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Macmillan, 1972).

[20] ARUP and IPUT Real Estate Dublin, Making Place: The Recalibration of Work, Life and Place (Dublin: IPUT Real Estate Dublin PLC, 2020).

[21] Haworth, ‘Workspace Design and the Pursuit of Happiness’ (Haworth, 2016), https://media.haworth.com/asset/96288/happiness-white-papers-by-haworth.pdf.

 

Linus Tan is a researcher and team developer at Design Factory Melbourne, Australia, focused architectural and design teams’ learning and reflecting behaviours to enable team members to use their tacit knowledge in their collective design processes. His broader interest is on understanding and influencing human behaviours in architectural environments. He participated in the 2021 WriteON workshop series, Amend.

 

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